Other Peoples' Dishes: Islamic Bacini on Eleventh-century Churches in Pisa

Other Peoples’ Dishes: Islamic Bacini on Eleventh-Century Churches in PisaAuthor(s): Karen Rose MathewsSource: Gesta, Vol. 53, No. 1 (2014), pp. 5-23Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the International Center of MedievalArtStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/675415 .

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This material was first presented in a session on spolia organized by Jenny Shaffer at the 2009 College Art Association conference held in Los Angeles. I had the opportunity to refine the research on this project at the 2010 NEH Summer Institute in Barcelona organized by Sharon Kinoshita and Brian Catlos. I would particularly like to thank Marcella Giorgio and Edizioni All’Insegna del Giglio for granting permission to reproduce photographs of the Pisan bacini. I would also like to thank the anonymous readers of Gesta, as well as Gesta’s editors, Linda Safran and Adam S. Cohen, for their thoughtful reading of the paper and helpful suggestions for improvement.

1. A few exhibition catalogues treat bacini as manifestations of western European interaction with the Islamic world: see Francesco Gabrieli and Umberto Scerrato, eds., Gli Arabi in Italia: cultura, con tatti e tradizioni (Milan: Scheiwiller, 1979); Gereon Sievernich and Hendrick Budde,

v53n1, Spring 2014 Other Peoples’ Dishes 5

Other Peoples’ Dishes: Islamic Bacini on Eleventh-Century Churches in Pisa KArEN rOSE MAtHEwS University of Miami

Abstract

Pisan churches of the eleventh century feature the use of ba-cini, or ceramic bowls, as decoration on an unprecedented scale. The hundreds of bowls that still exist all came from the Islamic world and were imported at a time when Pisa was undertaking military campaigns against and conducting trade with Muslim territories throughout the Mediterranean. Eleventh-century visual and textual sources characterize the Pisans as traders and crusaders simultaneously, and this paper argues that the seemingly contradictory qualities of holy warrior and merchant were not only complementary but essential for the definition of a Pisan civic identity. The bacini served as visual manifesta-tions of this identity, as they were located in highly visible loca-tions on numerous public monuments throughout the city. In the eleventh century, the bacini in Pisa came predominantly from North Africa and referenced the advantageous trade re-lations the Pisans enjoyed in the western Mediterranean, dif-ferentiating them from their rivals in Amalfi and Venice, who had already established control over commerce in the eastern Mediterranean. Far from being symbols of triumph over a Muslim enemy, these basins from the Islamic world displayed the city’s success in both crusade and trade and its sense of be-longing in a Mediterranean environment.

In Memoriam: Graziella Berti

t he churches of Pisa are exceptional in their early and extensive use of a particular kind of architectural decoration: bacini, ceramic bowls used chiefly to ornament

the exteriors of religious structures. In the eleventh century, the bacini in Pisa came exclusively from sites in the Islamic world—tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, Sicily, and Muslim Spain. The reason for the reuse of Muslim ceramics on Christian churches has not often been addressed, and when it has, the bacini have generally been interpreted as indications of triumph over Islam. An in-depth analysis of the visual and documentary evidence, however, paints a more nuanced pic ture of Muslim-Christian relations in the Mediterranean basin at this time. It will be argued here that the ceramics from Muslim lands employed by the hundreds as architec-tural decoration on Pisan churches played a central role in the assertion of a distinct civic identity in the eleventh cen-tury. At the same time that the Pisans were importing Islamic ceramics, they engaged in military confrontations against Muslim adversaries, epitomized by the expedition against the North African cities of al-Mahdiyya and Zawila in 1087. Characterized as crusaders in such contemporary texts as the Carmen in victoriam Pisanorum (1090s), the Pisans took on the mantle of holy warriors a decade before the First Crusade. In their dual role as crusaders and traders, the citizens of Pisa forged an identity based on interaction with the Islamic world in general, and North Africa in particular, that highlighted the distinctive qualities of the tuscan city in relation to rival Italian republics.

Although bacini decoration has received some attention in scholarship on the art of the medieval Mediterranean, the ceramics themselves are most often discussed from an archaeological rather than an art historical perspective.1 This paper focuses initially on the Muslim ceramics imported into Pisa and then addresses their use as decoration on a partic-

Gesta v.53n1 (Spring 2014).0031-8248/2010/7703-0004 $10.00. Copyright 2014 by the International Center of Medieval Art. All rights reserved.



6 Gesta v53n1, Spring 2014

ular church, San Sisto, constructed about 1087 (Fig. 1). The abundant visual and documentary evidence for San Sisto pro-vides an ideal opportunity to assess the meanings that bacini might have had in eleventh-century Pisa. Bacini could not only allude to military antagonism toward Muslim adversar-ies but also serve as manifestations of peaceful commerce; above all, they demonstrated Pisa’s early and aggressive in-troduction into a highly competitive Mediterranean network, where relations with North Africa were essential in establish-ing the city’s sense of belonging among the cultures that bor-dered the sea.

Eleventh-Century Pisan Bacini: Provenance, Typology, Dating, and Iconography

The bacini have been an object of study since the 1970s, when a comprehensive conservation project began to detach the medieval ceramics from Pisan structures and replace them with replicas. The removal of the objects from their ar-chitectural contexts allowed for detailed analysis of the pot-tery’s morphology, glazing, and ceramic body, and the re-sults appeared in the catalogue authored by Graziella Berti and Liana tongiorgi, I bacini ceramici medievali delle chiese di Pisa, published in 1981.2 This work organized the pottery according to glazing type (lead glaze, tin glaze, alkaline glaze, lusterware, and so on) subdivided by place of origin, but it also inventoried the ceramics for each architectural struc-ture. Although it is now superseded by the 2011 publication Ceramiche con coperture vetrificate usate come “bacini” by

Berti and Marcella Giorgio,3 which incorporates new research undertaken in the intervening thirty years and presents the material in a convenient CD format, the 1981 publication was a groundbreaking work in the study of medieval ceramics and provides a model for research on this topic that continues to be used to the present day.

In Ceramiche con coperture vetrificate, Berti and Giorgio address the ceramics in terms of provenance, manifesting the great amount of research that has been undertaken on estab-lishing pottery production centers in the Mediterranean over the past three decades. In the eleventh century, the basins brought to Pisa were all of Islamic manufacture. Glazed ce-ramics were not produced in Pisa until the thirteenth century, and other Italian pottery centers like Liguria that were preco-cious in their production of glazed wares were not active until the late twelfth century. All of the 146 remaining bacini (of the more than four hundred original pieces on eleventh-century churches) originated in western and eastern Mediterranean centers under Muslim control.4

recent archaeological excavations and scholarly publica-tions have helped refine our assessment of the provenance of Islamic ceramics found in Pisa. For example, the role of Sicily

3. Graziella Berti and Marcella Giorgio, Ceramiche con coperture vetrificate usate come “bacini”: importazioni a Pisa e in altri centri della Toscana tra fine X e XIII secolo (Florence: All’Insegna del Giglio, 2011).

4. The total number of original bacini can be estimated by counting the remaining basin-shaped cavities on the exteriors of the churches.

Figure 1. Pisa, San Sisto, general view (photo: author). See the elec-tronic edition of Gesta for a color version of this image.

eds., Europa und der Orient, 800–1900 (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann Lexikon, 1989); and Giovanni Curatola, ed., Eredità dell’Islam: arte islamica in Italia (Milan: Silvana, 1993), but they generally address the bacini in a cursory fashion. recent interpretive work on ceramics in general and on bacini in particular can be found in publications by Mara Nocilla, Testimonianze islamiche a Roma: i “bacini” del cam-panile dei SS. Giovanni e Paolo (XII secolo) (rome: Quasar, 2013); Sharon E. J. Gerstel, “The Sacred Vessel and the Mea sure of a Man,” in The Material and the Ideal: Essays in Medieval Art and Archaeology in Honour of Jean-Michel Spieser, ed. Anthony Cutler and Arietta Papaconstantinou (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 149–56; Eva Hoffman, “translations in Ivory: Interactions across Cultures and Media in the Mediterranean during the twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries,” in Siculo-Arabic Ivories and Islamic Painting, 1100–1300: Proceedings of the International Conference, Berlin, 6–8 July 2007, ed. David Knipp (Munich: Hirmer, 2011), 101–19; Karen rose Mathews, “Plunder of war or Objects of trade? The reuse and reception of Andalusi Objects in Medieval Pisa,” Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 4, no. 2 (2012): 233–58; and Jill Caskey, Art and Patronage in the Medieval Mediterranean: Merchant Culture in the Region of Amalfi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

2. Graziella Berti and Liana tongiorgi, I bacini ceramici medievali delle chiese di Pisa (rome: Bretschneider, 1981).



Other Peoples’ Dishes 7

as a production center has been downplayed now that many wares associated with Sicily have been attributed to tunisia.5 Among the Islamic ceramics, North African wares predomi-nated, indicating especially strong commercial ties between Pisa and this region.6 The earliest document defining rela-tions between Pisa and the Muslim territories of the Mediter-ranean dates to 1133 and was, appropriately, an agreement with North African rulers. Although this trade agreement pro-vides concrete evidence for commercial interaction between Pisa and Muslim territories in the western Mediterranean, by then ceramics from tunisia and elsewhere had already been imported into Pisa for at least a century.7 Bacini decora-tion could thus provide evidence for trade with the Islamic world considerably in advance of documentary materials. For other production centers, archaeological data remain scant. Moroccan pottery has not been studied comprehensively, and additional in-depth analyses may allow more objects to be attributed to Morocco. Pottery from al-Andalus is perhaps the most thoroughly studied of medieval Mediterranean ce-ramics, and even in that field much excavation work remains to be done.8 Egyptian wares are also well documented, espe-cially the luxury lusterware that was produced in Fustat (Old Cairo), although a number of different types of ceramics orig-inated in Egypt in the eleventh century, including incised and Fayyumi wares.9

5. Berti and Giorgio, Ceramiche con coperture vetrificate, 27, provide a general discussion of ceramic production centers and address Sicilian ceramics, 32–34.

6. Ibid., 35–41. For tunisian ceramic production in general, see the catalogue Couleurs de Tunisie: 25 siècles de céramique (Paris: Adam Biro; Institut du Monde Arabe, 1994). See also Graziella Berti, “Ceramiche medievali tunisine a Pisa: ‘testimonianze materiali’ di rapporti politici e commerciali tra la fine del X e la metà del XIII secolo,” in Tunisia e Toscana, ed. Vittorio Antonio Salvadorini (Pisa: Edistudio, 2002), 51–82; and Abdelaziz Daoulatli, “La production vert et brun en tunisie du IXe au XIIe siècle,” in Le vert & le brun: de Kairouan à Avignon, céramiques du Xe au XVe siècle (Marseilles: Musées de Marseille; Paris: réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1995), 69–76, for detailed discussion of ceramics from tunisia.

7. Ottavio Banti, “I trattati tra Pisa e tunisi dal XII al XIV secolo,” in L’Italia ed i paesi mediterranei: vie di communicazione e scambi commerciali e culturali al tempo delle Repubbliche Marinare; atti del Convegno internazionale di studi, Pisa, 6–7 giugno 1987 (Pisa: Nistri Lischi e Pacini, 1988), 43–74, at 45–49; and Marco tangheroni, “Fibonacci, Pisa e il Mediterraneo,” in Leonardo Fibonacci: il tempo, le opere, l’eredità scientifica, ed. Marcello Morelli and Marco tangheroni (Pisa: Pacini, 1994), 15–34, at 17–20.

8. See the excellent review of recent studies on early medieval Andalusi pottery by José Cristóbal Carvajal López and Miguel Jiménez Puertas, “Studies of the Early Medieval Pottery of al-Andalus,” Early Medieval Europe 19, no. 4 (2011): 411–35.

9. Oliver watson, Ceramics from Islamic Lands (London: Thames and Hudson, 2004), 53–54, 273–83. For Egyptian ceramics found

Eleventh-century ceramic imports from the Muslim Med-iterranean display a variety of techniques, and scholars gen-erally categorize these wares according to their glazing type. The two largest categories are lead glaze and tin glaze, and the two techniques are sometimes combined on the same ves-sel. tunisian and Sicilian pottery consists of both types and incorporates green, brown, and sometimes yellow decoration under a transparent lead glaze (Fig. 2). tin-glaze works fea-ture brown and green decoration on an opaque white or ivory background (Fig. 3). This green and brown pottery was the most ubiquitous type of Islamic ceramic, circulating through-out the Mediterranean, and it was the one first imitated by Christian workshops in Italy in the protomaiolica of the South and the archaic maiolica of tuscany.10

Distinctions between everyday and luxury ceramics were also based on glazing techniques. Luxury wares included lus-terware and cuerda seca or “dry cord” pottery, in which de-signs were drawn on the clay body with a greasy crayon to repel the glazes and keep the decorative forms in various col-ors sharply delineated. Both pottery types were considered luxurious owing to the difficult and time-consuming tech-niques required to make them and/or their limited circula-tion. Lus terware is a subset of the tin-glaze technique, and in the eleventh century lusterware imports came mainly from Egypt (Fig. 4).11 The use of expensive materials and the par-ticular method employed that allowed the metallic oxides to adhere to the glaze and shine like metal itself made luster ceramics prestigious in the Islamic world as well as in west-ern Europe. In the eleventh century cuerda seca pottery was produced exclusively in al-Andalus; excavations in southern

in Italy, see Cristina tonghini, “Fatimid Ceramics from Italy: The Archaeological Evidence,” in L’Égypte fatimide: son art et son histoire; actes du colloque organisé à Paris les 28, 29 et 30 mai 1998, ed. Marianne Barrucand (Paris: Presses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 1999), 285–97.

10. See Le vert & le brun for a comprehensive treatment of this type of ceramic. Section 2 of the catalogue addresses the Islamic production of this ware, and Section 3 discusses the borrowing and transformation of this technique in western Europe. Graziella Berti, Pisa: le “maioliche arcaiche,” secc. XIII–XV (Museo nazionale di San Matteo) (Florence: All’Insegna del Giglio, 1997), discusses local Pisan ceramics from the late Middle Ages that were based on green and brown Islamic pottery.

11. Berti and Giorgio, Ceramiche con coperture vetrificate, 48–49, list in their inventory sixteen lusterware bacini from the eleventh century. See also Jonathan Bloom, Arts of the City Victorious: Islamic Art and Architecture in Fatimid North Africa and Egypt (New Haven: Yale University Press in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2007), 93–96; robert Mason, Shine Like the Sun: Lustre-Painted and Associated Pottery from the Medieval Middle East (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda, 2004), 61–90; and watson, Ceramics from Islamic Lands, 273–87, for early Fatimid lusterware.




chitecture and ceramic decoration are contemporaneous.13 She cites evidence in the building fabric that indicates ac-commodations were made for the insertion of bacini during the construction process: the builders either carved cavities into stone structures to hold individual bowls or set bacini against a rubble core and surrounded them with bricks to encase them in a wall. The eleventh-century chronology for Pisan bacini has proved exceptionally early for a number of ceramic types—caliphal ware, cuerda seca, stamped ware, and lusterware—and does not accord with the dates associated with similar ceramics excavated in Spain. Comparable objects found in Spain date to at least fifty and sometimes more than one hundred years later than the Pisan bacini, a discrepancy that is especially marked in the case of cuerda seca ceram-

13. This concept has been a cornerstone of Berti’s research on bacini since the publication of the 1981 corpus, and she reiterates it in her most recent publications. Berti and Giorgio, Ceramiche con coperture vetrificate, 14–27, and Graziella Berti et al., “ ‘Bacini’ e architettura: tecniche di inserimento e complesso decorativo,” in I bacini murati medievali: problemi e stato della ricerca; atti del XXVI Convegno internazionale della ceramica (Albisola: Centro Ligure per la Storia della Ceramica, 1996), 243–64, discuss the various methods used to secure ceramics to structures.

Spain and Portugal have unearthed numerous cuerda seca pieces as well as a brown and green glazed ceramic known as caliphal ware (Fig. 5).12 Scholars can now compare archae-ological data from Iberian and Italian excavations with bacini on architectural structures. The large quantity of data cur-rently available has led to controversies about methodology and the dating of these ceramics.

Documentary and archaeological evidence date three Pi-san churches (San Piero, San Zeno, and San Matteo) to the early eleventh century, and the bacini on these structures have also been ascribed this date based on Berti’s premise that ar-

12. Berti and Giorgio, Ceramiche con coperture vetrificate, 45; Claire Déléry, “Using Cuerda Seca Ceramics as a Historical Source to Evaluate trade and Cultural relations between Christian ruled Lands and Al-Andalus, from the tenth to Thirteenth Centuries,” Al-Masāq 21, no. 1 (2009): 31–58; Graziella Berti, Claudio Capelli, and roberto Cabella, “Le importazioni dalla Penisola Iberica (Al-Andalus) e dalle Isole Baleari tra i bacini di Pisa (secoli X–XII),” in Actas del VIII Congreso internacional de cerámica medieval en el Mediterráneo, ed. Juan Zozaya et al. (Ciudad real: Asociación Española de Arqueología Medieval, 2009), 81–88, at 84; Graziella Berti and tiziano Mannoni, “Le ceramiche a ‘cuerda seca’ utilizzate come ‘bacini’ in toscana ed in Corsica,” in Actes du 5ème colloque sur la céramique médiévale en Méditerranée occidentale (rabat: Institut National des Sciences de l’Archéologie et du Patrimoine, 1995), 400–404.

Figure 3. Pisa, San Piero a Grado, tin-glaze green and brown ware from Málaga (photo: Graziella Berti and Marcella Giorgio, Ceramiche con coperture vetrificate usate come “bacini”: impor-tazione a Pisa e in altri centri della toscana tra fine X e XII secolo [Florence: All’Insegna del Giglio, 2011], no. 19). See the electronic edition of Gesta for a color version of this image.

Figure 2. Pisa, San Zeno, lead-glaze pottery from Sicily (photo: Graziella Berti and Marcella Giorgio, Ceramiche con coperture vetrificate usate come “bacini”: importazione a Pisa e in altri centri della toscana tra fine X e XII secolo [Florence: All’Insegna del Giglio, 2011], no. 7). See the electronic edition of Gesta for a color version of this image.




ics.14 A solution to this chronological impasse would be to reassess the dating of Pisan architectural structures, where a date closer to the mid-eleventh century might be more plau-sible and correspond better to the archaeological data. Even though the late tenth-century date of Pisan bacini has been challenged by these recent excavations, the archaeological record is far from complete, and a larger body of evidence is necessary to confirm or disprove Berti’s early dating for Muslim ceramics inserted into Pisan churches.

Archaeological contexts in Pisa have revealed a large quan-tity of Muslim ceramic wares. two extensive excavations in the 1990s (Piazza Dante and Piazza dei Cavalieri) and several

14. For the recent challenge to the early dating of Spanish ceramics in Pisa, see rafael Azuar, “Una necesaria revisión de las cerámicas andalusíes halladas en Italia,” Arqueología y territorio medieval 12, no. 1 (2005): 175–99, at 177–83, who questions the dating of green and brown wares, cuerda seca, stamped wares, and monochrome lead-glaze pottery. See also Déléry, “Using Cuerda Seca Ceramics,” 38, 43, who argues that the dates for cuerda seca on San Piero are almost a century too early, but the date is correct for the same type of ceramic on San Sisto. Berti and her colleague Alberto García Porras responded to Azuar’s critique in their article “A propósito de ‘Una necesaria revisión de las cerámicas andalusíes halladas en Italia,’ ” Arqueología y territorio medieval 13, no. 1 (2006): 155–95, reiterating their methodology and conclusions.

smaller ones conducted more recently uncovered fragments of ceramics from a variety of Muslim territories.15 In general, these finds corroborate conclusions about dating and prov-enance drawn from the bacini on churches. The same types of ceramics were found in both contexts, although the exca-vations contained no Egyptian ceramics from the eleventh century even though Egyptian products were relatively popu-lar as bacini. tunisian wares are the most common ceramics among both excavated finds and bacini, with Spanish ceram-ics coming a distant second in popularity. The Pisan excava-

15. Graziella Berti, “Ceramiche islamiche,” in Pisa, Piazza Dante: uno spaccato della storia pisana; la campagna di scavo 1991, ed. Stefano Bruni (Pisa: Cassa di risparmio, 1993), 535–82; eadem, “Ceramiche con rivestimenti vetrificati (islamiche, bizantine, graffite liguri, pisane),” in Ricerche di archeologia medievale a Pisa, vol. 1, Piazza dei Cavalieri, la campagna di scavo 1993, ed. Stefano Bruni, Elisabetta Abela, and Graziella Berti (Florence: All’Insegna del Giglio, 2000), 207–28; Monica Baldassarri and Graziella Berti, “Nuovi dati sulle importazioni di ceramiche islamiche e bizantine a Pisa,” in Zozaya et al., Actas del VIII Congreso internacional de cerámica medieval, 63–79; and Monica Baldassarri and Marcella Giorgio, “La ceramica di produzione mediterranea a Pisa tra XI e fine XIII secolo: circolazione, consumi ed aspetti sociali alla luce dei recenti scavi urbani,” in Pensare, classificare: studi e ricerche sulla ceramica medievale per Graziella Berti, ed. Sauro Gelichi and Monica Baldassarri (Florence: All’Insegna del Giglio, 2010), 35–51.

Figure 4. Pisa, San Sisto, Egyptian lusterware basin (photo: Graziella Berti and Marcella Giorgio, Ceramiche con coperture vetrificate usate come “bacini”: importazione a Pisa e in altri centri della toscana tra fine X e XII secolo [Florence: All’Insegna del Giglio, 2011], no. 130). See the electronic edition of Gesta for a color version of this image.

Figure 5. Pisa, San Piero a Grado, cuerda seca basin from Majorca (photo: Graziella Berti and Marcella Giorgio, Ceramiche con coper-ture vetrificate usate come “bacini”: importazione a Pisa e in altri centri della toscana tra fine X e XII secolo [Florence: All’Insegna del Giglio, 2011], no. 63). See the electronic edition of Gesta for a color version of this image.




tions did not provide greater precision about the dating of the Muslim ceramics, unfortunately, nor did they confirm the early dating proposed by Berti for the arrival of these wares in Pisa.16 Excavations in other parts of the city may reveal more sharply delineated stratigraphy that will permit a precise dat-ing of finds. what the archaeological data do indicate is that imported ceramics served simultaneously as tableware and architectural decoration. In the eleventh century these luxury imports graced the tables of upper-class or aristocratic house-holds; by the twelfth century, they were objects that the Pisan middle class could afford as well.17

The Pisan bacini display a great variety of colors and deco-rative forms that have been studied mostly in terms of the information they provide about chronology and provenance; very rarely are they discussed in terms of their visual effect on the architectural structures themselves.18 Geometric and veg-etal motifs predominate, while some ceramics fea ture Arabic writing or an approximation of it, and still others have ani-mal representations—mostly birds, but also fish, deer, lions, and some mythical animals (Fig. 6).19 One lone human figure adorns an Egyptian lusterware bowl formerly on San Sisto (Fig. 4), and boats are distinctive decorative forms on ceram-ics produced in Majorca (Fig. 3).20 In some cases, the artists painted the decorative motifs with great precision and skill; the seated person in Figure 4 is an excellent example of high-quality craftsmanship. On other pieces, the decoration is al-most haphazard, characterized by sketchy figures and impre-cise glazing, giving the impression that some of these works might have been seconds or castoffs. Their placement high up on church walls and facades, however, made questions of quality moot, since close viewing of the basins and their deco-rative motifs would have been difficult.

In addition, many of the objects were placed on churches with their writing or figures upside down. This seeming dis-regard for the iconography on the ceramics themselves raises

16. Berti, “Ceramiche islamiche,” 535, notes that the stratigraphy where a pottery sherd is found indicates the date when the object fell out of use, but it might have been in use for an extended arc of time before it was discarded. Baldassarri and Berti, “Nuovi dati,” 76, also call for additional excavations conducted in parts of Pisa where early medieval layers of habitation can be reached and studied.

17. Berti, “Ceramiche con rivestimenti vetrificati,” 207; and Baldassarri and Berti, “Nuovi dati,” 67.

18. For the distinction between archaeological and art his-torical approaches to ceramics, see Mason, Shine Like the Sun, 3. Nocilla, Testimonianze islamiche, 97–139, devotes a chapter to the iconography of the bacini on the campanile of SS. Giovanni e Paolo in rome.

19. The CD in Berti and Giorgio’s Ceramiche con coperture vetrificate includes color images of all the Pisan bacini.

20. For the San Sisto bacino, see Bloom, Arts of the City Vic-torious, 194.

the question of why bacini were used as architectural decora-tion. In the eleventh century, Pisa already had a decorative tradition that displayed “sensitivity to the expressive potential of polychromy and polymaterial,” to borrow a phrase from Jill Caskey’s discussion of thirteenth-century Amalfitan liturgi-cal furniture.21 Color and variety characterize the decoration of all the eleventh-century churches in Pisa. The polymate-rial aspect can be seen in both the buildings and the decora-tive materials. Although some churches were constructed of brick, the majority were built of stone, either the local yellow-gray limestone, panchino livornese (Fig. 7), or a combination of white and black or white and gray limestone, as seen most prominently on the cathedral (Fig. 8).22 These varied materi-als could be further accented with marble decorative elements that were generally ancient spolia.23

21. Caskey, Art and Patronage in the Medieval Mediterranean, 159.

22. San Piero, San Sisto, San Zeno, and San Frediano all use the local limestone, while Sto. Stefano and Sant’Agata are constructed of brick. The churches of San Matteo, San Pietro in Vincoli, and the cathedral employ alternating bands of white and black/gray stone.

23. The literature on ancient spolia in Pisa is extensive, particularly as it pertains to the cathedral. See esp. Adriano Peroni, “Spolia e architettura nel Duomo di Pisa,” in Antike Spolien in der Architektur des Mittelalters und der Renaissance, ed. Joachim Poeschke (Munich: Hirmer, 1996), 205–23; Giovanna tedeschi Grisanti, “Il reimpiego

Figure 6. Pisa, San Piero a Grado, bacino from Tunisia (photo: Graziella Berti and Marcella Giorgio, Ceramiche con coperture vetrificate usate come “bacini”: importazione a Pisa e in altri centri della toscana tra fine X e XII secolo [Florence: All’Insegna del Giglio, 2011], no. 34).




Decorative elements on the structures enhanced the color-ful and rich appearance of Pisa’s churches, the most promi-nent feature being blind arcades. Every eleventh-century church possesses some form of this decoration, either small arches that descend from the roofline of gabled facades, side walls, and clerestory walls, as at San Sisto and San Piero (Figs. 1 and 7), or larger arches that subdivide the facade and side walls into bays articulated by engaged pilasters or col-umns, as at San Matteo and San Pietro in Vincoli (Fig. 9). In the spandrels between or beneath the arches every church displays some form of inlaid medallion, recessed compart-ment, bacini decoration, or a combination of these decorative features. Bacini sometimes filled the recessed compartments, as seen in the cathedral and on San Piero, and another popu-lar decorative form was the alternation of diamond-shaped recesses and round stone medallions across a facade or side wall (Figs. 9–10). The stone medallions could consist of sim-ple starburst patterns, as at San Pietro in Vincoli, but on the Duomo they take the form of complex geometric intarsia pat-terns of multiple colors (Figs. 10–11). while the cathedral is by far the most elaborately decorated church from the elev-

di materiali di età classica,” in Il Duomo di Pisa, ed. Adriano Peroni (Modena: Panini, 1995), 1:153–64; Maria Cecilia Parra, “Marmi romani, marmi pisani: note sul reimpiego,” in Pisa e il Mediterraneo: uomini, merci, idee dagli Etruschi ai Medici, ed. Marco tangheroni (Milan: Skira, 2003), 105–11; Doriana Cattalini, “Il reimpiego del materiale classico nell’edificio romanico,” in Nel segno di Pietro: la basilica di San Piero a Grado da luogo della prima evangelizzazione a meta di pellegrinaggio medievale, ed. Maria Luisa Ceccarelli Lemut and Stefano Sodi (Pisa: Felici, 2003), 135–55; and Giuseppe Scalia, “ ‘romanitas’ pisana tra XI e XII secolo: le iscrizioni romane del duomo e la statua del console rodolfo,” Studi medievali, ser. 3, 13, no. 2 (1972): 791–843.

enth century in Pisa, many others manifest a similar interest in color and materials.

Yet the use of bacini and polychrome medallions appears to have been mutually exclusive. The cathedral possesses only one bacino, on the upper zone of the south wall, even though the exterior is decorated on all sides with intarsia diamonds and circles (Fig. 11). whereas the facade is distinctive in its use of colored marble roundels in the spandrels of the arches, this decoration dates to the twelfth century at the earliest; it may even be the work of restorers who rebuilt the facade after a disastrous fire in the late sixteenth century.24 Nevertheless, in the eleventh century the exteriors of Pisa’s churches were rich in architectural detail, articulated by blind arcades that are filled above and below by ceramics, stone medallions, and circular and diamond-shaped coffers. Bacini could have been an economical alternative to the expensive and time- consuming inlay medallions used on the cathedral and San Pietro in Vincoli. The use of colorful circles and diamond shapes in conjunction with other geometric patterns might also be understood as early experiments in the type of intri-cate, chromatic architectural decoration that reached its full expression in Cosmati work of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries throughout Italy. Both the Duomo and San Pietro in Vincoli also possess pavements with polychrome geomet-ric ornament, both of which have been dated to the twelfth century, and documentary evidence connects the cathedral’s inlaid floor to artists associated with Cosmati workshops.25

24. Antonio Milone, “Il Duomo e la sua facciata,” in Peroni, Il Duomo di Pisa, 1:191–206, at 195, 198–99.

25. For Cosmatesque pavements in general, see Paloma Pajares-Ayuela, Cosmatesque Ornament: Flat Polychrome Geometric Patterns in Architecture (New York: Norton, 2001). The pavement in San

Figure 7. Pisa, San Piero a Grado, exterior view (photo: author). See the electronic edition of Gesta for a color version of this image.

Figure 8. Pisa, Cathedral of Sta. Maria Assunta, exterior view (photo: author). See the electronic edition of Gesta for a color version of this image.




Even though the pavements postdate the polychrome orna-ment on eleventh-century church exteriors, they manifest a continued interest in the polychromy and polymateriality that were hallmarks of architecture from the previous century.

Colored marble and/or bacini were the principal modes of decoration for blind arcades and compartments on Pisa’s eleventh-century churches. The bacini, however, were a more convenient and inexpensive means of articulating church ex-teriors with colorful and varied decoration (Fig. 12).26 while good-quality stone was easily procurable, as seen in the pref-erence for stone over brick churches in this time period, it was expensive to quarry, transport, and work; since so many Islamic ceramics were readily available, practicality would seem to have been a significant determining factor in the use of bacini decoration. Economic concerns, however, can-not wholly explain the popularity of this decoration. These Islamic ceramics may also have had deeper symbolic associa-tions that made them the preferred medium for articulating church exteriors in Pisa.

Pietro in Vincoli is discussed in Aldo Armani, ed., San Pierino: una bella storia (Pontedera: CLD Libri, 2010), 24; the cathedral’s example receives more ample treatment in Peroni, Il Duomo di Pisa, 1:517–22.

26. Sauro Gelichi, Graziella Berti, and Sergio Nepoti, “relazione introduttiva sui ‘bacini,’ ” in I bacini murati medievali, 9–10; David Abulafia, “The Pisan Bacini and the Medieval Mediterranean Econ-omy: A Historian’s Viewpoint,” in Italy, Sicily and the Med iterranean, 1100–1400 (London: Variorum, 1987), no. XIII, 287–302, at 288; and Michelle Hobart, “Sardinian Medieval Churches and their Bacini: Architecture Embedded with Archeology” (PhD diss., New York University, 2006), 48–52.

The Symbolism of Bacini in Pisan Church Decoration: The Case of San Sisto

Pisa boasts six churches from the eleventh century that use bacini from the Muslim world as decoration on their exteri-ors: in chronological order, they are San Zeno, San Piero a Grado, San Matteo, the Duomo, Sto. Stefano, and San Sisto. tallying the round cavities that originally held bacini and the extant ceramics themselves, Berti and Giorgio deduced that 417 basins adorned eleventh-century structures in Pisa.27 This use is both precocious and unparalleled in extent. Nowhere else does one find this sheer number of bacini—close to two thousand pieces are attested—used consistently in a single city over a period of five centuries.28 Bacini decoration con-stituted a distinctive visual style for the city of Pisa, one that manifested a civic identity that had relations with the Islamic world at its core. Among the eleventh-century churches, San Sisto is unique in that its extensive bacini decoration consists

27. The church of San Piero a Grado alone has 222 cavities on its exterior. Of the original 417 eleventh-century bacini, 146 remain; most of these are housed in the Museo nazionale di San Matteo, and all are catalogued in Berti and Giorgio, Ceramiche con coperture vetrificate.

28. The abbey at Pomposa is the only other Italian structure whose use of early eleventh-century bacini rivals that of Pisan churches. The atrium of the monastery dates to about 1026 and features eight bacini on its facade. For the bowls at Pomposa, see Sauro Gelichi and Sergio Nepoti, “I ‘bacini’ in Emilia romagna, Veneto e Friuli Venezia Giulia,” in I bacini murati medievali, 51–66, at 53. Hobart, “Sardinian Medieval Churches,” 56–73, discusses an early Sardinian example, the church of San Gavino in Porto torres, which dates to after 1065.

Figure 9. Pisa, San Pietro in Vincoli (San Pierino), exterior view of northwest corner (photo: author). See the electronic edition of Gesta for a color version of this image.

Figure 10. Pisa, San Pietro in Vincoli (San Pierino), decorative medallions on facade (photo: author). See the electronic edition of Gesta for a color version of this image.




of ceramics whose dating can be corroborated by archaeo-logical finds (Fig. 1). Documentary sources are abundant for this church as well, and a literary work addresses the circum-stances under which the church was constructed in the late eleventh century. San Sisto serves here as a case study for the reception of bacini decoration in eleventh-century Pisa.

The foundation of the church of San Sisto is usually dated to 1087, immediately after a successful joint military cam-paign conducted by the Pisans and Genoese against the North African cities of al-Mahdiyya and Zawila.29 The Carmen in

29. Graziella Berti, “Pisa: dalle importazioni islamiche alle produzioni locali di ceramiche con rivestimenti vetrificati (seconda

victoriam Pisanorum, written in the 1090s to celebrate the Pisan victory, clearly connects the church’s construction with

metà X–prima metà XVII secolo),” in Bruni, Pisa, Piazza Dante, 119–43, at 127–28; Clara Baracchini and Antonino Caleca, “Presenze islamiche nell’arte a Pisa,” in Arte islamica: presenze di cultura islamica nella Toscana costiera, ed. Mariagiulia Burresi et al. (Pontedera: Bandecchi e Vivaldi, 1995), 51–81, at 54; Gabriella Garzella, “Il tempio di S. Sisto in Corte Vecchia nell’assetto urbano di Pisa medioevale,” in Momenti di storia medioevale pisana: discorsi per il giorno di S. Sisto, ed. Ottavio Banti and Cinzio Violante (Pisa: Pacini, 1991), 189–98, at 189; and Mauro ronzani, “La ‘Chiesa del comune’ nelle città dell’Italia centro-settentrionale (secoli XII–XIV),” Società e storia 6, no. 21 (1983): 499–534, at 507.

Figure 11. Pisa, Cathedral of Sta. Maria Assunta, decorative medallions on south wall (photo: author). See the electronic edition of Gesta for a color version of this image.




this victorious expedition and alludes to the founding of the church with the proceeds from the military campaign.30 The Pisans dedicated the church to St. Sixtus because their victory in al-Mahdiyya took place on the saint’s feast day, 6 August. San Sisto came to be the second patron of the city of Pisa, sharing this honor with the Virgin Mary.31

30. See H. Cowdrey, “The Mahdia Campaign of 1087,” English Historical Review 92, no. 362 (1977): 1–29, at 18, citing the Carmen, stanza 70: “Sunt reversi gloriosi virtute mirabili, et quo durat iste mundus honore laudabili; sancto Xisto consecrarunt perpulchram ecclesiam, et per orbem universum sanctis mandant premia.” See also Graziella Berti, “Le ceramiche,” in Burresi et al., Arte islamica, 83–101, at 83; and Giuseppe Scalia, “Pisa all’apice della gloria: l’epigrafe araba di S. Sisto e l’epitafio della regina di Maiorca,” Studi medievali, ser. 3, 48 (2007): 809–28, at 813–14.

31. Ottavio Banti, “VI agosto: dies memorialis,” in Banti and Violante, Momenti di storia, 19–23, at 19, indicates that it is not clear when St. Sixtus became the patron saint of Pisa, but

San Sisto was the only church in Pisa that performed the roles of both a commemorative and a votive church, con-structed as it was with funds from the citizens themselves to display their devotion to St. Sixtus and their pride in the structure and the military victory it was meant to commemo-rate.32 The Pisan citizenry maintained control over the church throughout the Middle Ages and had the right to select the

already in the early eleventh century—1005 at reggio and 1063 at Palermo—important military victories occurred on his feast day. See also Benvenuto Matteucci, “IX centenario di S. Sisto in Corte Vecchia,” in Banti and Violante, Momenti di storia, 13–17, at 14; and Marc von der Höh, Erinnerungskultur und frühe Kommune: Formen und Funktionen des Umgangs mit der Vergangenheit im hochmittelalterlichen Pisa (1050–1150) (Berlin: Akademie, 2006), 254–56, for the Pisan victories won on 6 August.

32. Gabriella Garzella, Pisa com’era: topografia e insediamento dall’ impianto tardoantico alla città murata del secolo XII (Naples: Liguori, 1990), 62, 106.

Figure 12. Pisa, San Sisto, detail of facade (photo: author).




prior and administer church possessions. Civic connections strengthened as the church came to serve an important ad-ministrative function in the heart of the city, an area known as Cortevecchia, site of the early medieval bailiff ’s court. San Sisto hosted city assemblies, meetings of the leaders of the commune, and legal proceedings, and a number of other sig-nificant judicial structures were located in the vicinity of the church.33 The church, then, was both a political and a reli-gious symbol, dedicated to one of the city’s patron saints and funded by the people to commemorate a military victory that brought great glory and wealth to Pisa.

San Sisto originally had 129 eleventh-century bacini orna-menting its stone exterior (Figs. 1 and 12). The fifty-two re-maining ceramics on San Sisto’s facade and side walls, all placed above blind arches immediately below the roofline, came from North Africa, Sicily, Egypt, and Spain.34 tunisian ceramics are the most prevalent, but San Sisto possesses a large number of Egyptian wares as well. Most of the Egyptian ceramics are lusterware (Fig. 4), while the Spanish bacini consist mainly of stamped ware under green glaze (Fig. 13). Green and brown glazes predominate on the tunisian products (Fig. 14), and the varied colors of the San Sisto ceramics—green, brown, yellow, turquoise, and golden luster—created a strong visual contrast with the stone of the church (Fig. 12).

Contemporary with San Sisto’s ceramic decoration is the Carmen in victoriam Pisanorum, a celebratory poem about the al-Mahdiyya and Zawila campaigns of 1087. Most schol-ars believe that the Carmen was composed immediately after the expedition, in the 1090s, making it the earliest docu-ment to address Pisa’s battles against Muslim territories in

33. Von der Höh, Erinnerungskultur und frühe Kommune, 259–60; and Garzella, “Il tempio di S. Sisto,” 192, 194.

34. Graziella Berti, Pisa, Museo nazionale di San Matteo: le ceramiche medievali e post-medievali (Florence: All’Insegna del Giglio, 1997), 25; and Berti and tongiorgi, I bacini ceramici medievali, 49–61. The facade features one fragmentary lusterware bowl below an arch, the only exception to the general placement above the blind arches. For the Egyptian bacini, see Graziella Berti, “Pisa: A Seafaring republic; trading relations with Islamic Countries in the Light of Ceramic testimonies,” in Colloque in ternational d’archéologie islamique: IFAO, Le Caire, 3–7 février 1993, ed. roland-Pierre Gayraud (Cairo: Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, 1998), 301–17, at 307–8. For Spanish products, see eadem, “I rapporti Pisa-Spagna (Al-Andalus, Maiorca) tra la fine del X ed il XV secolo testimoniati dalle ceramiche,” in Atti del XXXI Convegno internazionale della ceramica, Albisola, 29–31 maggio 1998 (Albisola: Centro Ligure per la Storia della Ceramica, 1999), 241–53, at 244–47; and Mathews, “Plunder of war,” 245–49. tunisian/Sicilian ceramics are discussed in Berti, “Ceramiche medievali tunisine,” 64–65. Moroccan stamped ware is mentioned by Abulafia, “Pisan Bacini,” 291.

the Mediterranean.35 Given its patriotic tone and numerous biblical allusions, the text was likely written by a Pisan cleric. In the Carmen, the Pisans are likened to the Hebrews of the Old testament, a chosen people whose victories enjoy divine sanction. Undertaken with the support of the pope, the al-Mahdiyya expedition is characterized as a crusade against the Muslims of North Africa.36 The participants also carried the purse of pilgrims, combining military and religious goals.

35. For an edition of the Carmen, see Cowdrey, “Mahdia Campaign,” 24–29. Giuseppe Scalia, “Il carme pisano sull’impresa contro i saraceni del 1087,” in Studi di filologia romanza offerti a Silvio Pellegrini (Padua: Liviana, 1971), 565–627, at 597–625, also publishes the poem in full. two online editions exist as well; see http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/carmeninvictoriam.html and http://www.intratext.com/IXt/LAt0619/_P1.HtM. For the date of the Carmen, see von der Höh, Erinnerungskultur und frühe Kommune, 121–22. Craig Fisher, “The Pisan Clergy and an Awakening of Historical Interest in a Medieval Commune,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 3 (1966): 143–219, at 183–88, is alone in dating the Carmen to the early twelfth century; his reasons for doing so are not very convincing.

36. Von der Höh, Erinnerungskultur und frühe Kommune, 122–27, 153–54; and Cowdrey, “Mahdia Campaign,” 18, 20–23. Stanza 34 of the Carmen notes: “Altera ex parte Petrus cum cruce et

Figure 13. Pisa, San Sisto, Spanish stamped-ware basin (photo: Graziella Berti and Marcella Giorgio, Ceramiche con coperture vetrificate usate come “bacini”: importazione a Pisa e in altri centri della toscana tra fine X e XII secolo [Florence: All’Insegna del Giglio, 2011], no. 119). See the electronic edition of Gesta for a color version of this image.




Most pertinent for an understanding of the Pisans’ per-ceptions of Muslims in the late eleventh century are the pas-sages in the text that describe their North African adversaries. The ruler of al-Mahdiyya, tamim, is characterized as a cruel and impious tyrant, akin to an Antichrist, and the religion of Islam is denigrated as a heretical offshoot of Christianity rather than a distinct faith.37 The general tenor of the text is one that celebrates a holy war prosecuted by the Christians, in which they came home victorious with great plunder and Muslim prisoners after having freed Christian captives from Maghreb prisons. The religious overtone continues when the victorious warriors return to Pisa, as the plunder taken in the campaign was used to construct the church of San Sisto and embellish the cathedral that was still under construction.38

gladio, Genuenses et Pisanos confortabat animo, et conduxerat huc princeps cetum apostolicum; nam videbat signum sui cum scarsellis populum.”

37. In the fifth stanza tamim is characterized as “Saracenus impius, similatus Antichristo, draco crudelissimus.”

38. Carmen, stanzas 70 (see note 30 above) and 71: “Set tibi regina celi stella maris inclita, donant cuncta pretiosa et cuncta eximia, unde tua in eternum splendebit ecclesia, auro gemmis margaritis et palliis splendida.” Fisher, “Pisan Clergy,” 184, gives the English translation: “But upon you, Queen of Heaven, famous Star of the

Muslim spoils, in other words, funded the building and deco-ration of two of the most important churches in Pisa.

Acquiring Muslim Ceramics: Gift, Plunder, and Trade

The close connection made in the Carmen between the church of San Sisto and military victories over Muslims raises the question of whether the bacini on the structure should be understood as plunder from the al-Mahdiyya cam-paign. No documentary evidence exists concerning the means of acquisition for any Pisan bacini, and sources are silent about the circulation of ceramics in general until the later Middle Ages. Even documents from the Cairo Genizah, which catalogue the exchange of a wide variety of commodi-ties throughout the Mediterranean, do not treat pottery.39 The three principal means of distribution for objects in the medieval Mediterranean were gift, plunder, and trade, all of which were potential vectors for the arrival of ceramics from the Islamic world in Pisa. Of these options, gifts seem the least likely, as there is no evidence that the city of Pisa participated in the gift exchange between courtly cultures around the Mediterranean. The Kitāb al-Hadāyā wa al-Tuh· af (The Book of Gifts and Rarities), written in Egypt at the end of the eleventh century, provides an extraordinary catalogue of objects circulating among Mediterranean courts, but the only ceramic wares mentioned are Chinese porcelain ves-sels.40 Few western European locations appear in the text at all, with the exception of cities in al-Andalus. The Kitāb al-Hadāyā does, however, afford one rare glimpse into European involvement in Mediterranean gift culture in its reference to the exchange of letters and gifts in 906 between Bertha, queen of the Franks, and the Abbasid caliph al-Muktafī bi-Allāh.41

Sea, they bestow all costly and exceptional treasures; whence your church will be eternally resplendent, gleaming with gold, jewels, pearls, and cloths.”

39. See S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society: An Abridgment in One Volume, rev. and ed. Jacob Lassner (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 9–68, for an introduction to the Genizah documents. See also Bloom, Arts of the City Victorious, 93.

40. Ghada al-Qaddumi, The Book of Gifts and Rarities: Kitāb al-Hadāyā wa al-Tuh· af (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 78–79, 194, 234. Among the contents of the dispersed Fatimid treasury were “trays painted with gold” that could refer to lusterware, but the terminology used is quite vague.

41. Ibid., 91–98. See also Catia renzi rizzo, “riflessioni sulla lettera di Berta di toscana al califfo Muktafî: l’apporto congiunto dei dati archeologici e delle fonti scritte,” in Il mare, la terra, il ferro: ricerche su Pisa medievale (secoli VII–XIII), ed. Graziella Berti, Catia renzi rizzo, and Marco tangheroni (Pisa: Pacini, 2004), 163–204; and Oleg Grabar, “The Shared Culture of Objects,” in Byzantine

Figure 14. Pisa, San Sisto, bacino from Tunisia (photo: Graziella Berti and Marcella Giorgio, Ceramiche con coperture vetrificate usate come “bacini”: importazione a Pisa e in altri centri della toscana tra fine X e XII secolo [Florence: All’Insegna del Giglio, 2011], no. 143). See the electronic edition of Gesta for a color version of this image.




The belligerent tone and religious ideology espoused in the eleventh-century Carmen would seem, at first glance, to jus-tify an understanding of Muslim ceramics in Pisa as military plunder.42 The construction of San Sisto with booty from a martial campaign would strengthen this argument. If bacini were plunder, however, they would originate from the precise locations attacked by Pisan forces.43 Pisa undertook a num-ber of campaigns against Muslim territories in the eleventh century—reggio in 1005, Sardinia/Denia in 1015, Bona in 1034, Palermo in 1063, and finally al-Mahdiyya/Zawila in 1087—but the city’s churches display ceramics from a variety of production centers that do not correspond to these sites of battle. If the church of San Sisto, for example, was meant to be understood as a showcase for trophies from the al-Mahdiyya/Zawila campaign, we would expect to find ceramics from those cities displayed on its exterior. The numerous tunisian ceramics on San Sisto, however, actually originate from the area around tunis, approximately 140 miles (225 km) from al-Mahdiyya, and not from Kairouan, the closest pottery cen-ter.44 The varied production centers for the eleventh-century bacini thus weaken the argument for their acquisition as plunder of war.

In addition to an extremely limited correlation between bacini and conquered Muslim cities in terms of provenance,

Court Culture from 829 to 1204, ed. Henry Maguire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 115–29, at 116n4. Other publications that address this idea of a Mediterranean court culture include Eva Hoffman, “Pathways of Portability: Islamic and Christian Interchange from the tenth to the twelfth Century,” Art History 24, no. 1 (2001): 17–50; Anthony Cutler, “Gifts and Gift Exchange as Aspects of the Byzantine, Arab, and related Economies,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 55 (2001): 247–78; and the essays in Gifts of the Sultan: The Arts of Giving at the Islamic Courts, ed. Linda Komaroff (Los Angeles: LACMA; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011).

42. Hobart, “Sardinian Medieval Churches,” 49; and Graziella Berti, “Pisa città mediterranea: la testimonianza delle ceramiche importate ed esportate,” in tangheroni, Pisa e il Mediterraneo, 169–73, at 170.

43. Graziella Berti, “I ‘bacini’ islamici del Museo Nazionale di San Matteo—Pisa: vent’anni dopo la pubblicazione del Corpus,” in Studi in onore di Umberto Scerrato per il suo settantacinquesimo compleanno, ed. Maria Vittoria Fontana and Bruno Genito (Naples: Università degli Studi di Napoli “L’Orientale,” 2003), 121–51, at 129; and Gelichi, Berti, and Nepoti, “relazione introduttiva sui ‘bacini,’” 9–10.

44. Berti and García Porras, “A propósito de ‘una revision,’ ” 160; and David Abulafia, “trade and Crusade, 1050–1250,” in Cross Cultural Convergences in the Crusader Period: Essays Presented to Aryeh Grabois on his Sixty-fifth Birthday, ed. Michael Goodich, Sophia Menache, and Sylvia Schein (New York: Peter Lang, 1995), 1–20, at 6–7. The Duomo, associated with the Palermo and al-Mahdiyya campaigns through inscriptions and the Carmen, also features an Egyptian bacino.

the notion of bacini being worthy of plunder is questionable. Medieval lists of war booty generally include gold and sil-ver objects and luxury textiles but do not refer to ceramics.45 In fact, two Pisan sources for the al-Mahdiyya campaign mention the type of plundered objects brought back to Pisa after the victory. The Carmen indicates that the victori-ous Pisans bestowed on the church of the Queen of Heaven (that is, the Duomo) great treasures that included gold, jew-els, pearls, and textiles.46 The Annales pisani, compiled by Bernardo Maragone in the late twelfth century, character-ize the al-Mahdiyya booty in a similar fashion, indicating that “from these cities [al-Mahdiyya and Zawila], after hav-ing killed almost all the Saracens, [the Pisans] took a great amount of plunder—gold, silver, cloths, and bronze objects.”47 Neither source mentions pottery, indicating that if ceramics were plundered, either they were not worth enumerating or they did not form part of the booty from these North African campaigns.

After the Balearic campaign of 1114–15, Pisan military ex-peditions against Muslim adversaries ceased and documents record commercial exchanges and cultural interactions.48 The first recorded trade agreement between the Pisans and Mus-lim territories of North Africa was signed in 1133, but most scholars believe that more informal agreements must have been in force well before this date.49 This trade accord and numerous subsequent ones gave the Pisans exclusive and lu-crative commercial privileges in such North African cities as

45. Juan Carlos ruiz Souza, “Botín de guerra y tesoro sagrado,” in Maravillas de la España medieval: tesoro sagrado y monarquía, ed. Isidoro G. Bango torviso (León: Junta de Castilla y León, 2000), 31–39, at 32–33.

46. Carmen, stanza 71. See note 38 above for the Latin text and English translation.

47. Michele Lupo Gentile, Gli annales pisani di Bernardo Maragone (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1936), 7: “Ex quibus civitatibus, Saracenis fere omnibus interfectis, maximam predam auri, argenti, palliorum et eramentorum abstraxerunt.”

48. Banti, “I trattati tra Pisa e tunisi dal XII al XIV secolo,” 45; and Catia renzi rizzo, “I rapporti Pisa-Spagna (Al-Andalus, Maiorca) tra l’VIII e il XIII secolo testimoniati dalle fonti scritte,” in Atti del XXXI Convegno internazionale della ceramica, 255–64, at 259.

49. Lupo Gentile, Gli annales pisani, 9: “Pax inter Pisanos et regem de Morroch et regem de tremisiana, et Gaidum Maimonem in decem annos firmata est.” See also Ottavio Banti, “I rapporti tra Pisa e gli stati islamici dell’Africa settentrionale tra l’XI e il XIV secolo,” in Le ceramiche medievali delle chiese di Pisa: contributo per una migliore comprensione delle loro caratteristiche e del loro significato quale documento di storia (Pisa: Pacini, 1983), 9–26, at 13. For details of the first treaty, see Banti, “I trattati tra Pisa e tunisi,” 46; for treaties with the Balearic Islands, see Gary Doxey, “Diplomacy, trade and war: Muslim Majorca in International Politics, 1159–81,” Journal of Medieval History 20, no. 1 (1994): 39–61, at 43–44, 53.




tunis and Bugia and also allowed for the establishment there of permanent trade outposts, known as fondachi.50

Despite the fact that scholars generally postulate a cause-and-effect relationship between conflict and commerce, the bacini evidence may argue for the two existing simulta-neously.51 The sheer number of Muslim ceramics in Pisa ar-gues for their acquisition through trade rather than booty. Berti has noted the consistency in the quantity and prov-enance of ceramics from the eleventh to the twelfth century. Pisa had firmly established commercial contacts with Muslim territories, particularly North Africa and al-Andalus, by the twelfth century, and the fact that ceramics from these very production centers are also documented in Pisa in the elev-enth century indicates some level of continuity in their means of acquisition. It is entirely possible that Pisans acquired pot-tery from the Muslim world in a variety of ways, with trade, plunder, and gifts as plausible vectors. These vessels served as tableware for elite households and as architectural decoration for the city’s churches in the eleventh century. Their differ-ent means of acquisition and multiple functions argue for a multi faceted understanding and perception of this Muslim pottery on the part of medieval Pisan audiences. Bacini could be the visual manifestation of the Pisans’ dual role as crusad-ers and traders, helping to forge a distinct civic identity that differentiated the tuscan city from its Italian rivals.

Bacini as Manifestations of a Crusader/ Trader Mentality

In their relations with the Muslim Mediterranean, Pisan merchant-warriors pursued two separate but complementary endeavors: military conflict characterized as crusade, and trade in lucrative commodities. Commerce with the Muslim world was often regarded with suspicion from a Christian perspective, especially when the goods being traded in-cluded weapons, raw materials for shipbuilding, and slaves.52 Nonetheless, merchants from the Italian maritime republics

50. For Pisan relations with Bugia in particular, see Djamil Aïssani and Dominique Valerian, “I rapporti tra Pisa e Béjaïa (Bugia) in età medievale: un contributo essenziale alla costruzione della ‘mediterraneità,’ ” in tangheroni, Pisa e il Mediterraneo, 235–43.

51. For the general division of relations between these two phases, see Banti, “I rapporti tra Pisa e gli stati islamici,” 11–12.

52. See, most recently, Sophia Menache, “Papal Attempts at a Commercial Boycott of the Muslims in the Crusader Period,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 63, no. 2 (2012): 236–59; and David Jacoby, “The Pisan Commercial Manual of 1278 in the Mediterranean Context,” in Quel mar che la terra inghirlanda: in ricordo di Marco Tangheroni, ed. Franco Cardini and Maria Luisa Ceccarelli Lemut (Pisa: Pacini, 2007), 2:449–64, at 460, 463.

of Amalfi, Venice, Genoa, and Pisa all eagerly sold to their Muslim trading partners goods and materials that were used in battle against Christians. The moral taint associated with this commerce was one that could be assuaged in part by merchants also playing the role of holy warriors. In the case of Pisa, the city’s service to the Church in numerous battles against Muslim enemies in the eleventh century earned it the praise of the pope and the granting of ecclesiastical honors to the Pisan church.53 A direct relationship existed, then, be-tween the prosecution of holy war and the increase of civic honors and dignity for Pisa.

textual sources also justify battles against Muslims as es-sential in the combating of piracy. whereas any merchant sailor could transform himself into a pirate at a moment’s notice, it was Muslim pirates, and particularly those from al-Andalus, who were often blamed for the disruption of Med-iterranean commerce that jeopardized the efficient and safe movement of people and goods.54 Defense against pirate at-tacks first mobilized the Italian maritime republics along the tyrrhenian Sea in the tenth and early eleventh century. Even merchants from Amalfi, generally known for their positive re-lationship with all the Muslim polities in the Mediterranean, took up arms against Muslim forces to protect their shores from piracy. warfare with Muslims, then, could be justified from both religious and economic perspectives, but ulti-mately religious rhetoric was one tactic among many used to achieve political stability and economic prosperity in a vola-tile Mediterranean environment.

The Carmen in victoriam Pisanorum lauded the Pisans’ victories at al-Mahdiyya and Zawila over a Muslim ruler re-sponsible for acts of piracy that resulted in the incarcera-tion of Christians in North Africa. The Muslim pottery on San Sisto may manifest these ideas visually and allude to the Pisans’ role as warriors of the faith, fulfilling their Christian duty to free their coreligionists from captivity. The author of the Carmen portrayed the successful campaigns of 1087 in deeply patriotic fashion as victories won by the Pisan polity, a collective effort by its citizens. As such, placing ceramics that could be construed as plunder on the church of San Sisto made these objects trophies for the city as a whole. when

53. Giuseppe Scalia, “La consecrazione della cattedrale sullo sfondo del contrasto con Genova per i diritti metropolitani sulla Corsica,” in Nel IX Centenario della metropoli ecclesiastica di Pisa: atti del Convegno di studi, 7–8 maggio 1992, ed. Maria Luisa Ceccarelli Lemut and Stefano Sodi (Pisa: Pacini, 1995), 131–41, at 134.

54. See esp. travis Bruce, “Piracy as Statecraft: The Mediterranean Policies of the Fifth/Eleventh-Century taifa of Denia,” Al-Masāq 22, no. 3 (2010): 235–48; and Emily Sohmer tai, “The Legal Status of Piracy in Medieval Europe,” History Compass 10, no. 11 (2012): 838–51.




the Pisans gathered at San Sisto for assemblies or other civic functions, they could view the brightly colored bacini and re-member the great campaign won by their fellow townsmen or ancestors (Figs. 1 and 12). In this way, the San Sisto ceram-ics could be associated with a specific confrontation against North African Muslims that defined the Pisans as crusaders who fought for God and their city.

The battle against Muslim pirates had clear religious over-tones but was also motivated by economic concerns: rid-ding the Mediterranean of pirates was essential for the free flow of goods in a highly lucrative trade network. Crusading mentalities and civic pride could thus be combined with an understanding of bacini as commercial goods just when Mediterranean trade was developing into an essential part of the Pisan economy. The fact that bacini circulated in the mar-ketplace at the same time that they decorated Pisan churches makes it likely that they were viewed as commodities or trade goods. Thus, the bacini would have triggered a variety of asso-ciations. They began their career as commodities in western Islamic markets, and when Pisans later purchased these ob-jects in the marketplace they continued in this role. It is at this point that the biography of Muslim ceramics became more complex, their life stories more eventful.55 Some remained in the commodity realm, circulating as kitchen utensils, while others were removed from the market. There was no qualita-tive difference between the ceramics in these two categories; the same types of wares were found in household contexts and on churches in medieval Pisa.

In their shift from the normative path for ceramic bowls, bacini underwent a process of singularization, to use Igor Kopytoff ’s term; as diverted or terminal commodities their commodification was incomplete.56 This terminal status lay in their new function outside the mercantile realm; once attached to a church, they never reentered the market. Diverting a commodity can be a powerful symbolic act, dras-tically changing the object’s function and calling attention

55. For this notion of the life story of things, see Arjun Appadurai, “Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value,” in The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, ed. Arjun Appadurai (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 3–63, at 13–15; Igor Kopytoff, “The Cultural Biography of Things,” in Appadurai, Social Life of Things, 64–91, at 66–68; and Fred r. Myers, “Introduction: The Empire of Things,” in The Empire of Things: Regimes of Value and Material Culture, ed. Fred r. Myers (Santa Fe, NM: School of American research Press; Oxford: James Currey, 2001), 3–61, at 18.

56. Kopytoff, “Cultural Biography of Things,” 77, developed the concepts of terminal and diverted commodities. See also Appadurai, “Introduction,” 26–29; and Mark Osteen, “Gift or Commodity?” in The Question of the Gift: Essays across Disciplines, ed. Mark Osteen (London: routledge, 2002), 229–47, at 235, 244.

to its new, elevated status.57 As diverted commodities, bacini would have had more symbolic force in their role as church decoration than they ever would have achieved as tableware. Divorced from the commercial world and moving into what has been characterized as the “twilight zone of singularized non-commodification,” the Pisan ceramic basins became ob-jects of desire.58 taking functional utensils and displaying them as if they were art enhanced their worth but profoundly changed their meaning. Their restricted circulation and aes-theticizing as decoration elevated them to a higher luxury register that arrested their commodity stage. Diverted com-modities, however, present a paradox: even though they are removed from market circulation, they never truly lose their commodity status. Their display advertises their value, and their symbolic and monetary worth increases accordingly.59 An eleventh-century Pisan audience, citizens of a city that viewed the Mediterranean as a source of wealth and glory, could therefore appreciate the status of bacini as diverted commodities. As tableware for the wealthy, Muslim ceram-ics were luxury goods; on churches like San Sisto, they were expensive commodities and artworks simultaneously. This in-terplay of primary and secondary uses, economic value, and religious symbolism would have been a particularly apposite expression of Pisan identity and its political and economic as-pirations in the eleventh century.

Bacini as Manifestations of Civic Identity and Maritime Rivalry

The placement of bowls on Pisa’s churches should be un-derstood as a celebration of the economic prosperity and political recognition that commerce with the Islamic Med-iterranean afforded the city in the eleventh century.60 These relations made Pisa unique in tuscany and, indeed, in north-ern Italy. A distinctive civic identity could be displayed to the city’s inhabitants, neighbors, and rivals, demonstrating that Pisa’s prestige, power, and prosperity derived from military

57. Kopytoff, “Cultural Biography of Things,” 73–74; and Daniel Miller, “Alienable Gifts and Inalienable Commodities,” in Myers, Empire of Things, 91–115, at 95.

58. wim M. J. van Binsbergen, “Commodification: Things, Agency, and Identities; Introduction,” in Commodification: Things, Agency, and Identities; The Social Life of Things Revisited, ed. wim M. J. van Binsbergen and Peter L. Geschiere (Münster: Lit, 2005), 9–51, at 51.

59. Appadurai, “Introduction,” 28; and Michael rowlands, “Value and the Cultural transmission of Things,” in van Binsbergen and Geschiere, Commodification, 267–81, at 267–68.

60. See Caskey, Art and Patronage in the Medieval Mediterranean, 156–64, for a similar argument concerning twelfth- and thirteenth-century Amalfi.




victories and from lucrative trade with the Islamic world. For Pisa’s citizens, bacini decoration proclaimed their role as de-fenders of Christendom and participants in Mediterranean trade. In a period of growing civic consciousness, battles against Muslim territories brought honor to the city, and Muslim objects decorated important civic structures like the cathedral and San Sisto.61 The people of Pisa who brought such objects back to the city would have been the primary audience for the reception of Muslim imports and would likely have appreciated the juxtaposition of ceramics from the Islamic world on their church exteriors.

while the use of Muslim ceramics as architectural deco-ration incorporated Pisa into a Mediterranean cultural net-work, this type of decoration also differentiated the tuscan city from its maritime commercial rivals in Italy—Genoa, Venice, and Amalfi. All of these cities traded actively in the Mediterranean and formulated an aesthetic that incorporated objects, styles, and materials from other Mediterranean cul-tures into their public artworks, but Pisa was unique in its early use of actual Muslim objects.62 Genoa did not enter into Mediterranean trade until after the First Crusade, but both Amalfi and Venice had been conducting commerce in the Mediterranean since the ninth century. The Amalfitans achieved early economic success as middlemen in a trade net-work incorporating Muslim territories of North Africa and the Byzantine Empire. Although Amalfi established cordial relations with territories throughout the Mediterranean, their most lucrative trading partners were the Byzantine Empire and Egypt.63

61. For Pisan civic consciousness, see in particular von der Höh, Erinnerungskultur und frühe Kommune; Antonio Milone, “ ‘Arabitas’ pisana e medioevo mediterraneo: relazioni artistiche tra XI e XIII secolo,” in Fibonacci tra arte e scienza, ed. Luigi A. radicati di Bronzolo (Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana, 2002), 101–31; Edward Coleman, “Sense of Community and Civic Identity in the Italian Communes,” in The Community, the Family and the Saint: Patterns of Power in Early Medieval Europe; Selected Proceedings of the International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds, 4–7 July 1994, 10–13 July 1995, ed. Joyce Hill and Mary Swan (turnhout: Brepols, 1998), 45–60; and Chris wickham, “The Sense of the Past in Italian Communal Narratives,” in The Perception of the Past in Twelfth-Century Europe, ed. Paul Magdalino (London: Hambledon Press, 1992), 173–89.

62. This is a topic I am addressing in a book-length study.63. For Amalfitan trade, see Armand O. Citarella, “The relations of

Amalfi with the Arab world before the Crusades,” Speculum 42, no. 2 (1967): 299–312; idem, “Patterns in Medieval trade: The Commerce of Amalfi before the Crusades,” Journal of Economic History 28, no. 4 (1968): 531–55; and Vera von Falkenhausen, “Il commercio di Amalfi con Costantinopoli e il Levante nel secolo XII,” in Amalfi, Genova, Pisa, e Venezia: il commercio con Costantinopoli e il vicino

It was from these two centers as well that the Amalfitans took the cultural references seen in their art and architecture dating from the eleventh century. The cathedral of Amalfi possesses bronze doors commissioned in and exported from Constantinople (Fig. 15). The patron of the doors, a mer-chant by the name of Pantaleone, was an important mem-ber of the Amalfitan merchant colony in eleventh-century Constantinople.64 Amalfitan art of this century also features the extensive use of ivory, a material that was still exotic and rare in western Europe. The pen box associated with the Amalfitan merchants Manso and tauro through an inscrip-tion on its side panel is carved in a style that closely associates it with the Islamic world and more specifically with Fatimid Egypt (Fig. 16).65 Its decoration resembles the numerous carved elephant tusks, or oliphants, that circulated throughout the Mediterranean and have been characterized by Avinoam Shalem as manifesting a “Fatimid international style” in the eleventh century.66 Thus, when the Amalfitans wished to ex-press their integration into Mediterranean culture, they did so through the vectors of Byzantine and Fatimid styles, tech-niques, materials, and even artists. Their familiarity with the ports of Constantinople and Alexandria and the merchant communities established there made these two centers the ideal source for the cultural references employed in eleventh-century Amalfitan art and architecture.

Oriente nel secolo XII; atti della giornata di studio, Pisa, 27 maggio 1995, ed. Ottavio Banti (Pisa: Pacini, 1998), 19–38.

64. the bronze doors are discussed in general in Antonio Braca, Le culture artistiche del Medioevo in Costa d’Amalfi (Amalfi: Centro di Cultura e Storia Amalfitana, 2003), 63–86. More specific analyses of the doors can be found in Maria Vittoria Marini Clarelli, “Pantaleone d’Amalfi e le porte bizantine in Italia meridionale,” in Arte profana and arte sacra a Bisanzio, ed. Antonio Iacobini and Enrico Zanini (rome: Argos, 1995), 641–50; Antonio Iacobini, “Arte e tecnologia bizantina nel Mediterraneo: le porte bronzee dell’XI–XII secolo,” in Medioevo mediterraneo: l’Occidente, Bisanzio e l’Islam; atti del Convegno internazionale di studi, Parma, 21–25 settembre 2004, ed. Arturo Carlo Quintavalle (Milan: Electa, 2007), 496–510; and Margaret English Frazer, “Church Doors and the Gates of Paradise: Byzantine Bronze Doors in Italy,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 27 (1973): 145–62, esp. 147–48.

65. Braca, Le culture artistiche, 87–98, esp. at 91 for the pen box. Avinoam Shalem, The Oliphant: Islamic Objects in Historical Context (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 36, 73–74, mentions the pen box as well. See also robert Bergman, The Salerno Ivories: Ars Sacra from Medieval Amalfi (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980), 91; and Antonio Braca, “Lavori in avorio in Amalfi medievale: considerazioni ed ipotesi,” Rassegna del Centro di cultura e storia amalfitana, n.s., 5 (1994): 111–28, esp. 121–23.

66. Shalem, Oliphant, 73–75; see also Hoffman, “translation in Ivory,” 100–119, who discusses ivories and their circulation in the Mediterranean as well as the sharing of motifs between objects of various media.




Venice’s entry into Mediterranean trade followed a trajec-tory similar to that of Amalfi, with Byzantium as its princi-pal trading partner. The Venetians enjoyed advantageous com mercial privileges in the Byzantine Empire as early as 992, and an imperial chrysobull of the late eleventh century (either 1082 or 1092) conceded to Venice unprecedented ac-cess to Byzantine markets that made it virtually impossi-ble for its Italian rival Amalfi to compete.67 In the southern Mediterranean, Egypt was once again the prime location

67. Donald Nicol, Byzantium and Venice: A Study in Diplomatic and Cultural Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 40–42, 59–62; and Peter Frankopan, “Byzantine trade Privileges to Venice in the Eleventh Century: The Chrysobull of 1092,” Journal of Medieval History 30, no. 2 (2004): 135–60.

for Venetian trade. One of the most telling indications of Venetian penetration into Egyptian markets was the furta sacra of the relics of St. Mark, taken from Alexandria in 828 by two Venetian merchants. Other documentary sources note the regular presence of Venetian traders in Egypt, and, by the late Middle Ages, convoys traveled back and forth between Venice and Alexandria one or two times each year.68

Deborah Howard, among other scholars, has noted the cul-tural inspiration that Venice derived from the East, and in the ninth to eleventh century this inspiration originated almost exclusively in Byzantium.69 The church of Sta. Fosca and the cathedral of torcello, both on the Venetian island of torcello, and the church dedicated to Sta. Maria and San Donato on Murano all employ Byzantine architectural forms and decoration. The basilica of San Marco was, however, by far the most byzantinizing structure in Venice. when the doges Domenico Contarini and Vitale Falier undertook the renova-tion of the church in the eleventh century, they adopted the church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople as a model, beginning a trend of emulating Byzantium that continued in Venice for centuries (Fig. 17).70 Before the thirteenth century

68. Maria Nallino, “Il mondo arabo e Venezia fino alle crociate,” in La Venezia del Mille (Florence: Sansoni, 1965), 161–81, cites Venetian sources such as the chronicles of John the Deacon and Andrea Dandolo, as well as the work of the Arabic author Ibn al-Athīr concerning Venice’s interaction with the Muslim world before the crusades. See also David Jacoby, “Les Italiens en Égypte aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles,” in Coloniser au Moyen Âge, ed. Michel Balard and Alain Ducellier (Paris: Colin, 1995), 76–89; and Michel Balard, “Notes sur le commerce entre l’Italie et l’Égypte sous les Fatimides,” in Barrucand, L’Égypte fatimide, 627–33.

69. See, in general, Deborah Howard, Venice and the East: The Impact of the Islamic World on Venetian Architecture, 1100–1500 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000); and eadem, The Architectural History of Venice (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), chap. 2, “Byzantine,” 7–41, esp. 7–28.

70. This is a topic addressed in a number of publications. For the Byzantine influences in the eleventh-century Basilica of San Marco, see Ennio Concina, A History of Venetian Architecture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 22–29; and Howard, Architectural History of Venice, 24. For Byzantine influences in general, see the contributions by Fabio Barry, “Disiecta Membra: ranieri Zeno, the Imitation of Constantinople, the Spolia Style, and Justice at San Marco,” 7–62, and Holger Klein, “refashioning Byzantium in Venice, ca. 1200–1400,” 193–225, both in San Marco, Byzantium, and the Myths of Venice, ed. Henry Maguire and robert S. Nelson (washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks research Library and Collection, 2010). Henry Maguire addresses the waning of Byzantium as a cultural model for Venice in Maguire, “Venetian Art as a Mirror of Venetian Attitudes to Byzantium in Decline,” in 550th Anniversary of the Istanbul University: International Byzantine and Ottoman Symposium (XVth Century); 30–31 May 2003, ed. Sümer Atasoy (Istanbul: Istanbul Üniversitesi, 2004), 281–94.

Figure 15. Amalfi, Cathedral of Sant’Andrea, bronze doors on west facade (photo: author). See the electronic edition of Gesta for a color version of this image.




there are no examples in Venetian monuments of borrowing Islamic forms or objects—the most clear-cut case of cultural appropriation from Muslim territories was the theft of St. Mark’s relics. It was only after the Fourth Crusade that cul-tural references from the Islamic world played a significant role in Venetian art and architecture.71

In both Amalfi and Venice, Byzantium was the Med iter-ranean culture that dominated trade relations and served as a powerful cultural model. references to Byzantium in art from Amalfi and Venice were frequent and overt, and they mirrored the intensive diplomatic, cultural, and economic interaction between these Italian maritime republics and the Byzantine Empire. trade with the Islamic world was also sig-nificant for both cities, and Egypt under the Fatimid caliphs was the most important trading partner for both. Visual ref-erences to Islamic Egypt in Amalfitan and Venetian art were not abundant, however, and did not necessarily reflect the consistent commercial exchange between the Italian cities and the Fatimid state. In Amalfi the references to Islamic cul-ture were limited to the borrowing of a Fatimid international style and the use of ivory in small-scale luxury objects, and in Venice in the eleventh century such cultural inspiration was completely absent.

Both of these maritime powers traded in the western Med-iterranean as well, although they concentrated their commer-cial interests in the East. The marginalizing of the western Mediterranean by these two republics provided an oppor-tunity for Pisa whereby the tuscan city could pursue trade with Muslim territories and carve out a niche for itself in an

71. See, for example, Howard’s discussion of visual references in San Marco to Alexandria in Venice and the East, chap. 3, “San Marco,” 65–109.

already crowded commercial arena. North Africa in particu-lar was a region where Pisan Mediterranean interests could flourish, and the city’s merchant-warriors undertook two military campaigns in the eleventh century against North African targets, Bona in 1034 and al-Mahdiyya in 1087. Pisa also negotiated trade agreements with rulers of these territo-ries in order to ensure privileged access to their markets. As noted above, the first known peace treaty between Pisa and any Muslim territory was signed in 1133 with the rulers of Morocco and tlemcen. The Pisans reached another agree-ment in 1157 with the ruler of tunisia, a pact brokered by the Pisan ambassador Abu tamim Meimun del fu Guglielmo, a figure whose very name indicates Christian and Muslim par-entage.72 The bacini on Pisan churches, wares that arrived in an overwhelming majority from North Africa, seem to point specifically to Pisan commercial relations with the western Mediterranean, underscoring this zone as an area of Pisan hegemony. As a structure built to celebrate a Pisan crusade against a North African adversary, the church of San Sisto ideally manifested this close relationship with North African territories. The tunisian ceramics that decorated the church most effectively represented Pisan trading interests because the pottery originated from tunis, the territory’s commercial center and main port city in the eleventh century.73 The com-plex but highly advantageous relationship that Pisa developed with North Africa encompassed both trade and crusade, and

72. Michele Amari, I diplomi arabi del R. Archivio fiorentino: testo originale con la traduzione letterale e illustrazioni (Florence: Le Monnier, 1863), 1–6; Ottavio Banti, “Pisa, tunisi e il Maghreb fra il XII e il XV secolo,” in Salvadorini, Tunisia e Toscana, 31–50, at 39–40; and Aïssani and Valerian, “I rapporti tra Pisa e Béjaïa (Bugia),” 241.

73. Berti, “Ceramiche medievali tunisine,” 57–58, 66–67.

Figure 16. Pen box, ivory, late eleventh–early twelfth century, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1917 (17.190.236) (© The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource, NY).




the church of San Sisto was a monument to both the complex-ity of this relationship and its strategic importance for Pisa’s Mediterranean ambitions.

Economic opportunities in the western Mediterranean provided Pisa with the necessary foothold to compete with its Italian rivals, Amalfi and Venice, and the use of North African bacini on the prominent civic church of San Sisto proclaimed the hard-fought economic concessions and polit-ical agreements Pisa had secured with Muslim trading part-ners in the west, accords that flourished for centuries. Bacini from tunisia were the most ubiquitous ceramics in the city, both in Pisan households and on the city’s churches, and were very likely recognizable as such to the people who owned them. These tangible, physical objects, commodities im-ported from Pisa’s favored commercial partners in the west-ern Mediterranean, indexed the city’s role in international trade networks while working within an established aesthetic that featured polychromy and varied materials in architec-

tural decoration. North African bacini played a central role in creating a distinctive decorative style on Pisan churches that differentiated the city from other Italian maritime republics.

In the eleventh century, neither Amalfi nor Venice used Islamic objects in their civic, religious, or private artistic com-missions; visual references to Byzantium were far more preva-lent and more accurately reflected the commercial interests of those two Italian trading centers. Amalfitan artists and patrons did employ forms and styles from the Islamic world but not the objects themselves, making the Pisans unique in their comprehensive display of Muslim ceramics on their eleventh-century churches. The city developed a distinctive branding—what I would call a bacini aesthetic—that was so effective that it continued uninterrupted for five hundred years. relations with North Africa played a key role in Pisan political and economic interaction in the Mediterranean and continued for centuries as well. Despite the disastrous defeat of Pisa at the hands of the Genoese in the battle of Meloria in 1284, an event that effectively ended Pisan commercial ex-pansion in the Mediterranean, trade between Pisa and North Africa continued unabated.74 The model established by Pisan–North African relations, in turn, was applied to Pisa’s subse-quent encounters with other Muslim territories across the sea throughout the Middle Ages.

Ceramic bowls from Muslim lands were effective carriers of meaning for Pisan patrons and audiences. Bacini symboli-cally incorporated the Pisans into a pan-Mediterranean so-ciety and visually conveyed the sources of the city’s wealth in the eleventh century: political interaction and commercial exchange with the Muslims of the western Mediterranean. They manifested the sophisticated urban life in medieval Pisa while distinguishing the city from other Italian mercantile centers. Through its extensive collection of Muslim ceramics, Pisa could compare itself favorably with its Italian rivals. The Islamic bacini complemented the already established inter-est in polychromy and polymateriality in local architectural decoration, while at the same time embodying core attitudes toward the products of contemporary foreign cultures: appre-ciation of their beauty, color, and exotic provenance; admira-tion for their technical virtuosity; and recognition of Muslims as trading partners, political rivals, and neighbors across the Mediterranean Sea.

74. See esp. Banti, “Pisa, tunisi e il Maghreb,” for this later period.

Figure 17. Venice, Basilica of San Marco, ground plan ( from Banister Fletcher, A History of Architecture on the Comparative Method, 6th ed. [New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1921], page 233c).



Other Peoples' Dishes: Islamic Bacini on Eleventh-century Churches in Pisa

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